<p>I know some people that spent months working on their Common App and supplement essays, and I know others that wrote most of their essays over the course of a few hours.</p>
<p>Just to get a sense of perspective, how much time did you spend on your Common Application essay, and how much time did you spend on your supplement essays?</p>
<p>I spent the most time on my personal statement–probably around 20 hours after all revisions and writing. My supplement essays are much less, with some around 3 hours and some only one hour. This is over the course of a couple months though. </p>
<p>3 months for actually developing the essay, so far like 10 hours for writing this final version (I had like ten different topics I went through, so maybe closer to 20 hours writing). I’m almost done with my second draft of what I’m sure is my final topic.</p>
<p>@LAMuniv Just curious, could you expand a little bit on the ‘3 month’ planning process? Do you mean three months of actively writing different essay prompts, same prompt, or just entertaining ideas without writing them down? </p>
<p>@ceruleancircles more a combination of free-writing and brainstorming topics (a lot of this time was spent banging my head against my keyboard asking myself why I can write novels but not a 500-word essay about myself…)</p>
<p>EDIT a lot of time also just trying to think about who I am/how I want to portray myself… This is my second time applying to college as a freshman, and I kind of became a totally different person in my senior year when I switched from being a “STEM person” to a “humanities person”, so a lot of that time was thinking about how to present that to colleges and exploring how I wanted to portray myself in my new identity, as cheesy as that sounds…</p>
<p>@LAMuniv Haha I get it; I love writing about everything, anything and just daydream introspection, but mixing those two together is disastrous. The kids at my school write obscene numbers of drafts so I wondered if everyone else was doing that too so I’m glad the whole broken thoughts process applies to others too. </p>
<p>Good luck to you and your essays</p>
<p>But to answer the question, its been at the back of my mind since September, but still don’t have anything solid/definite yet.</p>